How extremely personal ChatGPT conversations were ending up on Google
Henk Van Ess was one of the first to figure out that anyone could search for these chats using key certain key words.
He discovered people had been discussing everything from non-disclosure agreements, confidential contracts, relationship problems, insider trading schemes and how to cheat on papers.
This unforeseen problem arose because of the share feature, which if clicked by the user would create a predictably formatted link using words from the chat.
This allowed people to search for the conversations by typing in 'site:chatgpt.com/share' and then putting key words at the end of the query.
Van Ess said one chat he discovered detailed cyberattacks targeting named targets within Hamas, the terrorist group controlling Gaza that Israel has been at war with since October 2023.
Another involved a domestic violence victim talking about possible escape plans while revealing their financial shortcomings.
The share feature was an attempt by ChatGPT to make it easier for people to show others their chats, though most users likely didn't realize just how visible their musings would be.
In a statement to 404Media, OpenAI did not dispute that there were more than 100,000 chats that had been searchable on Google.
'We just removed a feature from [ChatGPT] that allowed users to make their conversations discoverable by search engines, such as Google. This was a short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations,' said Dane Stuckey, OpenAI chief information security officer.
'This feature required users to opt-in, first by picking a chat to share, then by clicking a checkbox for it to be shared with search engines,' Stuckey added.
Now, when a user shares their conversation, ChatGPT creates a randomized link that uses no key words.
'Ultimately we think this feature introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn't intend to, so we're removing the option,' Stuckey said.
'We're also working to remove indexed content from the relevant search engines. This change is rolling out to all users through tomorrow morning. Security and privacy are paramount for us, and we'll keep working to maximally reflect that in our products and features,' he added.
However, much of the damage has already been done, since many of the conversations were already archived by Van Ess and others.
For example, a chat that's still viewable involves a plan to create a new bitcoin called Obelisk.
Ironically, Van Ess used another AI model, Claude, to come up with key words to use to dredge up the most juicy chats.
To find people discussing criminal conspiracies, Claude suggested searching 'without getting caught', 'avoid detection', 'without permission' or 'get away with.'
But the words that exposed the most intimate confessions were 'my salary', 'my SSN', 'diagnosed with', or 'my therapist.'
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The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘A million calls an hour': Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians
One afternoon in late 2021, Microsoft's chief executive, Satya Nadella, met with the commander of Israel's military surveillance agency, Unit 8200. On the spy chief's agenda: moving vast amounts of top secret intelligence material into the US company's cloud. Meeting at Microsoft's headquarters near Seattle, a former chicken farm turned hi-tech campus, the spymaster, Yossi Sariel, won Nadella's support for a plan that would grant Unit 8200 access to a customised and segregated area within Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. Armed with Azure's near-limitless storage capacity, Unit 8200 began building a powerful new mass surveillance tool: a sweeping and intrusive system that collects and stores recordings of millions of mobile phone calls made each day by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Revealed here for the first time in an investigation by the Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, the cloud-based system – which first became operational in 2022 – enables Unit 8200 to store a giant trove of calls daily for extended periods of time. Microsoft claims Nadella was unaware of what kind of data Unit 8200 planned to store in Azure. But a cache of leaked Microsoft documents and interviews with 11 sources from the company and Israeli military intelligence reveals how Azure has been used by Unit 8200 to store this expansive archive of everyday Palestinian communications. If you have something to share about this story, you can contact Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham using one of the following methods. Secure Messaging in the Guardian app The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said. If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select 'Secure Messaging'. To send a message to Harry and Yuval please choose the 'UK Investigations' team. Signal Messenger You can message Harry using the Signal Messenger app. Use the 'find by username' option and type hfd.32 Email (not secure) If you don't need a high level of security or confidentiality you can email SecureDrop and other secure methods If you can safely use the tor network without being observed or monitored you can send messages and documents to the Guardian via our SecureDrop platform. Finally, our guide at lists several ways to contact us securely, and discusses the pros and cons of each. According to three Unit 8200 sources, the cloud-based storage platform has facilitated the preparation of deadly airstrikes and has shaped military operations in Gaza and the West Bank. Thanks to the control it exerts over Palestinian telecommunications infrastructure, Israel has long intercepted phone calls in the occupied territories. But the indiscriminate new system allows intelligence officers to play back the content of cellular calls made by Palestinians, capturing the conversations of a much larger pool of ordinary civilians. Intelligence sources with knowledge of the project said Unit 8200's leadership turned to Microsoft after concluding it did not have sufficient storage space or computing power on the military's servers to bear the weight of an entire population's phone calls. Several intelligence officers from the unit, which is comparable to the US National Security Agency (NSA) in its surveillance capabilities, said that a mantra emerged internally that captured the project's scale and ambition: 'A million calls an hour'. The system was built to sit on Microsoft's servers behind enhanced layers of security developed by the company's engineers with Unit 8200's instructions. The leaked Microsoft files suggest that a large proportion of the unit's sensitive data may now be sitting in the company's datacentres in the Netherlands and Ireland. Disclosures about the role of Microsoft's Azure platform in the surveillance project come as the US tech giant faces pressure from employees and investors over its ties to Israel's military and the role its technology has played in the 22-month offensive in Gaza. In May, an employee disrupted a keynote speech by Nadella in an act of protest, at one point yelling: 'How about you show how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?' After the Guardian and others revealed in January Israel's reliance on Microsoft technology during the war in Gaza, the company commissioned an external review of the relationship. The review, Microsoft said, had 'found no evidence to date' that Azure or its AI products were 'used to target or harm people' in the territory. A senior Microsoft source said the company had held conversations with Israeli defence officials and stipulated how its technology should be used in Gaza, insisting Microsoft systems must not be employed for the identification of targets for lethal strikes. However, Unit 8200 sources said intelligence drawn from the enormous repositories of phone calls held in Azure had been used to research and identify bombing targets in Gaza. One of the sources said that when planning an airstrike on an individual located within densely populated areas where high numbers of civilians are present, officers would use the cloud-based system to examine calls made by people in the immediate vicinity. The sources also said use of the system had increased during the campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 60,000 people in the territory, the majority of whom are civilians, including over 18,000 children. According to health officials in Gaza, at least 60,000 people have been killed during Israel's current military campaign, launched after the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023 which killed nearly 1,200 people. The actual death toll is likely to be significantly higher, as the figure only includes Palestinians killed by bombs or bullets whose bodies have been recovered, leaving out thousands trapped under the rubble or killed by starvation and other indirect victims of the campaign. According to the data – which includes the deaths of militants – women, children, and elderly people account for approximately 55% of the recorded deaths. But the initial focus of the system was the West Bank, where an estimated 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation. Unit 8200 sources said the information stored in Azure amounted to a rich repository of intelligence about its population that some in the unit claimed had been used to blackmail people, place them in detention, or even justify their killing after the fact. 'When they need to arrest someone and there isn't a good enough reason to do so, that's where they find the excuse,' one said, referring to the information stored in the cloud. A Microsoft spokesperson said it had 'no information' about the kind of data stored by Unit 8200 in its cloud. They said the company's 'engagement with Unit 8200 has been based on strengthening cybersecurity and protecting Israel from nation state and terrorist cyber-attacks'. 'At no time during this engagement,' they added, 'has Microsoft been aware of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cellphone conversations using Microsoft's services, including through the external review it commissioned.' The driving force behind the cloud project – described by one source as a 'revolution' within the unit – was Sariel, commander of Unit 8200 between early 2021 and late 2024. A career intelligence officer, Sariel was a strong advocate for projects of this scale. Following a 2015 wave of deadly so-called 'lone wolf' attacks by young Palestinians, many of whom were teenagers unknown to the security services, Sariel had overseen a significant expansion of the volume of Palestinian communications that Unit 8200 intercepted and stored. His answer was to begin 'tracking everyone, all the time', said an officer who worked for Sariel at the time. Instead of traditional surveillance of specific targets, Sariel's project relied on mass surveillance of Palestinians in the West Bank and used novel AI methods to extract insights. 'Suddenly the entire public was our enemy,' said another source who worked on the project, which sought to predict whether someone represented a threat to Israeli security. One system developed in this period, sources said, scanned all text messages between Palestinians in the West Bank and assigned each message a risk rating based on an automated analysis of whether it included words deemed to be suspicious. Still in use, the system – known as 'noisy message' – can identify text messages in which people talk about weapons or discuss wanting to die. When Sariel became Unit 8200 commander in early 2021, he prioritised forging a partnership with Microsoft that would give the unit the ability to go further and capture and analyse the content of millions of phone calls each day. At his meeting with Nadella later that year, Sariel does not appear to have explicitly stated his plan to store Palestinian phone calls in the cloud, referring instead to 'sensitive workloads' of secret data, according to internal records of the meeting. But documents suggest that Microsoft engineers understood the data stored in Azure would include raw intelligence, including audio files, while some Israel-based Microsoft staff, including alumni of Unit 8200, appear to have known about what the unit hoped the joint project would achieve. 'You don't have to be a genius to figure it out,' one source said. 'You tell [Microsoft] we don't have any more space on the servers, that it's audio files. It's pretty clear what it is.' Microsoft's spokesperson said: 'We are not aware of Azure being used for the storage of such data.' They said Unit 8200 was simply a customer of its cloud services and Microsoft 'did not build or consult with Unit 8200' on a cloud-based surveillance system. However, in early 2022, Microsoft and Unit 8200 engineers worked quickly and closely together to design and implement advanced security measures within Azure to meet the unit's standards. 'The rhythm of interaction with [the unit] is daily, top down and bottom up,' one document noted. Among Microsoft staff, the project was shrouded in considerable secrecy and engineers were told not to mention Unit 8200 by name. Under the plan, vast troves of raw intelligence material would sit in Microsoft's datacentres overseas. Files suggest that by July this year, 11,500 terabytes of Israeli military data – equivalent to approximately 200m hours of audio – was held in Microsoft's Azure servers in the Netherlands, while a smaller proportion was stored in Ireland. It's unclear if all of this data belongs to Unit 8200; some may belong to other Israeli military units. According to the files, Unit 8200 informed Microsoft that it planned to move over time as much as 70% of its data, including secret and top secret data, into Azure and was willing to 'push the envelope' with the kind of sensitive and classified information that intelligence agencies normally held on their own servers. 'They're always trying to challenge the status quo,' one executive noted. Asked about Sariel's meeting with Nadella, Microsoft's spokesperson said it 'is not accurate' to say the CEO provided his personal support for the project with Unit 8200. They said Nadella 'attended for 10 minutes at the end of the meeting' and there was 'no discussion' of the content of the data the unit planned to move into Azure. However, according to internal Microsoft records of the meeting seen by the Guardian, Nadella offered support for Sariel's aspiration to move so much of the elite surveillance unit's data into the cloud, described earlier in the meeting as including sensitive intelligence material. 'Satya suggested that we identify certain workloads to begin with and then gradually move towards the 70% mark,' one record states. It adds that Nadella said 'building the partnership is so critical' and 'Microsoft is committed to providing resources to support.' Several months before meeting Microsoft CEO Nadella in 2021, Sariel had published a book about artificial intelligence under a pen name – revealed by the Guardian to be the spy chief's – in which he urged militaries and intelligence agencies to 'migrate to the cloud'. Known within Israeli intelligence as a tech evangelist, Sariel valued what he characterised to colleagues as a friendly relationship with Nadella, according to a senior intelligence source. 'Yossi bragged a lot, even to me, about his connection with Satya,' they said. (Microsoft denied that Nadella and Sariel had a close relationship.) 'He sold [the partnership] internally and got a huge budget,' another former intelligence colleague said. 'He claimed it was the solution to our problems in the Palestinian arena.' Sariel declined to comment and referred the Guardian's questions about the project to the Israel Defence Forces. An IDF spokesperson said its work with companies such as Microsoft was based on 'legally supervised agreements'. They added: 'The IDF operates in accordance with international law, with the aim of countering terrorism and ensuring the security of the state and its citizens.' After publication, the IDF issued a new statement. 'We appreciate Microsoft's support to protect our cybersecurity. We confirm that Microsoft is not and has not been working with the IDF on the storage or processing of data.' For its part, Microsoft viewed the multiyear partnership as a lucrative commercial opportunity. Executives anticipated hundreds in millions of dollars in revenue and 'an incredibly powerful brand moment' for Azure, according to the files. '[Unit 8200's] leadership hopes to expand the mission-critical work tenfold in the coming years,' one executive noted. As Unit 8200 began to make use of Azure's storage capabilities in 2022, intelligence officers rapidly grasped the new powers at their disposal. 'The cloud is infinite storage,' one source familiar with the system said. Calls – which include calls made by Palestinians to international and Israeli numbers – are typically retained in the cloud for about one month, though storage can be scaled up, allowing the unit to keep hold of calls for longer periods of time when needed, several intelligence sources explained. This allows the unit to go back in time and retrieve the phone conversations of people who become of interest, they said. Previously, surveillance targets would need to be pre-selected for their conversations to be intercepted and stored. Several of the sources insisted the cloud-based system had prevented deadly attacks against Israelis. One said 'saving lives' of Israelis was the principal motivation behind Sariel's vision for the system. But it notably failed to prevent the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 in which nearly 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel and 240 people were kidnapped. In the wake of the attacks, Sariel faced criticism for his apparent prioritisation of 'addictive and exciting' technology over old-fashioned intelligence methods, which some critics said contributed to the disaster. Sariel resigned last year, accepting responsibility for '8200's part in the intelligence and operational failure'. In the ensuing war in Gaza, the cloud-based system pioneered by Sariel has been put to frequent use alongside a series of AI-driven target recommendation tools also developed on his watch and debuted by the military in a campaign that has devastated civilian life and created a profound humanitarian crisis. Israel's destruction of Gaza's telecoms infrastructure has reduced the volume of phone calls in the territory but sources said the information held in the cloud remained useful. According to one, enthusiasm for the system had grown among intelligence officers working on Gaza as the war progressed and they saw the military is 'heading towards long-term control there'.
The Independent
4 hours ago
- The Independent
Instagram adds feature that users have wanted for years
Instagram is introducing a new "repost" feature, allowing users to share friends' pictures and reels, a functionality already common on other social media platforms. Unlike other platforms, reposted content will not appear on a user's main profile but in a dedicated tab on their profile. The platform is also adding a "friends" tab within Reels, which will display content exclusively from friends or posts they have interacted with. Users will have control over their privacy settings, including the ability to switch off the display of their likes or comments in the friends' feed. These updates are part of Instagram's efforts to make user feeds more relevant and are currently rolling out globally, having started in the US.
Finextra
5 hours ago
- Finextra
What Is Vibe Coding? A Beginner's Guide to the Coding Movement You Can't Ignore: By Raktim Singh
What does it mean to "vibe code"? Why Gen Z Is Changing the Way We Program Programming used to entail spending long hours staring at black-and-white terminals and fixing syntax problems in silence. Now, a new movement called Vibe Coding is changing the way the next generation interacts with code. This isn't simply a cool trend on TikTok. Vibe Coding is a big change in culture. It changes how coding looks and feels in the age of AI, low-code tools, and learning that is led by creators. In this post, we'll talk about: • What is Vibe Coding? • How it got started and why it's so popular • How it may be used in real life • The positive and negative sides of Vibe Coding • Who should think about it • What skills, tools, and mentality are needed? • This refers to the implications for tech businesses and their hiring strategies. So, what does it mean to vibe code? Vibe coding is the art of writing code that feels natural, creative, collaborative, and entertaining. It mixes: • Music or background noise while working • Beautiful code environments (such as custom themes, VS Code + AI copilots) • Conversation starters through tools like ChatGPT/Gemini • Community coding (through livestreams, Discord, GitHub co-sessions) • Quickly making prototypes with AI tools that don't need codes • Learning by changing a code that already exists instead of starting again It's coding with flow. With mood. With a vibe. You could say it's the opposite of "boring" or mechanical programming. It can change, look appealing, and raise dopamine levels, and AI often helps it. How did vibe coding get started? Three cultural elements came together to create Vibe Coding: 1. The rise of AI copilots, like Codeium, GitHub Copilot, and Replit Ghostwriter Coding used to require writing everything from scratch, but now it means organizing, prompting, and modifying ideas made by AI. 2. People who make content and livestreams Creators streamed their coding sessions on sites like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok, using lo-fi tunes, interesting UI designs, and laid-back commentary. Gen Z and millennial students connected. 3. The rise of low-code and GenAI With tools like Bubble, Glide, Replit, Framer, and AI platforms like ChatGPT, LearnML, and Vercel AI SDK, it was easier to make apps, websites, and automations. As these factors came together, a new group of coders emerged. They didn't have to have a CS degree, but they wanted to develop quickly, learn swiftly, and look good doing it. Where Is Vibe Coding Being Used? Vibe coding isn't only about looks; it's being used in a lot of other fields: 1. Indie Hackers and Creative Tech Vibe coding is a quick way for creators and indie developers to make MVPs and landing pages, notably in music, fashion, gaming, and productivity. 2. New businesses and side projects Entrepreneurs are using vibe coding tools like Replit and ChatGPT to make prototypes of AI tools, portfolio sites, bots, and even commercial SaaS products. 3. Hackathons and student projects College students and others in boot camps are learning to code not from books, but by watching YouTube videos, remixing projects, and employing AI helpers. 4. Builders and freelancers Freelancers on Fiverr and Upwork are increasingly utilizing low-code, AI-first workflows to build websites and automate processes, often enhanced by developer setups that prioritize a positive atmosphere. 5. AI and Prompt Engineering Prompt engineers have become integral to this trend, using structured natural language as code to create AI agents, workflows, and tools. ✅ Benefits of Vibe Coding 1. Quick Learning Curve: AI copilots, visual builders, and remixing GitHub projects all help you learn faster. 2. Not as scary It goes against the idea that coding is hard, uninteresting, or exclusively for people who are good at math. 3. Very expressive Vibe coders see code as art and make it their own by customizing themes, adding music, and making it their own. 4. Build first, then think. It promotes experimenting based on curiosity instead of tutorials that are full of theory. 5. Open and welcoming You don't need a degree in computer science. Only Wi-Fi, curiosity, and rudimentary tools. ⚠️ Things to watch out for: Not a profound understanding If you rely too much on AI ideas, you may not understand basic logic very well. Not Being Able to Think Clearly Complex problem-solving can be harder without formal reasoning or data structures. Difficult to Scale or Keep up. Vibe-coded projects might not use the best methods for testing, version management, or making things bigger. 4. Bias in resumes Some employers may not appreciate experience with AI or low-code as much as they should (but this is changing quickly). 👥 Who Should Give Vibe Coding a Shot? Vibe Coding is great for: • Students who want to build portfolios and get internships • Freelancers who want to get things done faster with fewer tools • Non-tech founders who want to make MVPs • Designers and marketers who want to learn no-code and AI skills • Prompt engineers who want to make GenAI workflows But even experienced engineers can benefit from Vibe setups for quick prototyping, testing AI agents, or just taking a break from "serious" coding. Here is what you need to know before starting with Vibe Coding: You can't just plug in and play with Vibe Coding. To do well, you need to know the basics of programming (JS/Python is useful). • A decent code editor, such as Replit or VS Code with extensions • You should know how to use GitHub and understand version control. • AI copilots, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Codeium, are tools that assist with coding tasks. • Tools that don't need a lot of coding, such as Glide, Webflow, Bubble, and • Communities like Discord, YouTube coding channels, and Reddit forums • Have a good taste in music or enjoy relaxing YouTube playlists! How do tech companies benefit from this? Tech firms, especially those that work in edtech, productivity, or tools, can learn a lot from and help the Vibe Coding movement. 1. Finding talent Vibe developers are creative, quick, and they frequently learn on their own. They make live portfolios that are perfect for jobs in product, frontend, no-code, or AI assistants. 2. Rethinking the Developer Experience (DevX) People appreciate GitHub Copilot, Replit, Codeium, and Framer because these tools help users achieve a flow state. Companies should make sure that their APIs, SDKs, and platforms meet the needs of this generation. 3. Improving skills and using internal tools Internal teams can leverage Vibe workflows to teach citizen developers and automate simple activities with low-code and GenAI. 4. Market Positioning Companies that employ vibe coding in their design, documentation, onboarding, and other areas will draw in Gen Z users, creators, and early adopters. How Vibe Coding and AI Are Very Similar AI is what makes Vibe Coding possible. It fuels the tools, makes them easier to use, and lets people interact with code in this new way. This is how: AI is a coding partner, not just a tool. Vibe coders see AI helpers like ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, Gemini, Replit Ghostwriter, and Claude as partners, not simply tools. These technologies help with the following: • Functions that finish themselves • Break down complicated code • Offer suggestions for best practices • Fix and improve the logic. • Make boilerplate code or even whole UI layouts. This lets programmers keep their "vibe" going while AI does the hard work. 2. The New Syntax is Natural Language. Vibe developers don't memorize syntax; instead, they write out what they want in simple English and let AI build the framework. Large language models (LLMs) make it possible to go from "writing code" to "prompting code." This means "Make a responsive navbar with a logo and login button" is now easy to turn into usable HTML/CSS in seconds. 3. GenAI Sparks Prototyping and Creativity With AI tools that create code, images, videos, text, and data changes, Vibe developers can build entire applications with minimal effort. This speeds up innovation and experimentation, which is what the vibe movement is all about. 4. AI Makes Vibe Coding Easy to learn. AI makes things fair for everyone. Students, freelancers, artists, and others who don't code can now build: • By changing templates and using tools that ask questions, you can create chatbots, AI agents, portfolio sites, and automation scripts without needing extensive coding knowledge. 5. AI Promotes a "Learn by Doing" Way of Thinking Vibe developers typically learn by working with AI, asking it questions, constructing things with it, and fixing them together. This way of learning by talking is extremely different from using textbooks. AI is not only a tool for vibe coding; it is what makes it happen. Vibe Coding is a mix of coding, creativity, AI assistants, and flow. The Vibe is Real: A Final Thought Coding isn't the end of traditional programming; it's the start of a new coding culture that is more creative, open, and AI-enhanced. It's not about getting rid of developers. It's about giving more individuals the tools they need to code without being afraid and with delight. As AI makes it easier to get started, we may soon see the meaning of "coding" change from typing to coordinated workflows, visual blocks, and conversational purposes. Until then, open your editor, play that lo-fi music, and make something great. The vibe is beckoning.
